[…] the bodie had no smart / Of any wound: it was the minde that felt the cruell stings.

Before leaving the question of early arithmetic I should mention that for practical purposes the almost universal use of the abacus or swan-pan rendered it easy to add or subtract, or even to multiply and divide, without any knowledge of theoretical mathematics. … [I]t will be sufficient here to say that they afford a concrete way of representing a number in the decimal scale, and enable the results of addition and subtraction to be obtained by a merely mechanical process.

In recent years his friend the fourth-quarter king summered, autumned, and springed in nearby Southern California, which was how they stayed so easily in touch.

He landed dead stick.